Natural Resource Management Systems in Times of Economic Transition. Local Institutions and Environmental Entitlements in Northern Vietnam


Background
Vietnam’s process of economic transition and world market integration has been ongoing for more than 15 years. The promotion of economic growth has also intensified the integration of the northern mountainous regions into wider national and international economic processes. The expansion of market forces into these regions with rather weak institutional structures has led to a number of development problems, such as growing social disparities, environmental degradation and conflicts of natural resource utilisation. Some of the northern mountain provinces rank amongst the poorest of the country. The possibilities of an expansion in agricultural production are limited as all land suitable for growing wet rice is already under cultivation. This situation requires sophisticated economic development and environmental policies in order to prevent social marginalisation and environmental exploitation. A great number of international development agencies assist the government and its ministries in dealing with the emerging problems. There is a particular interest to develop and enhance strategies of environmental protection and sustainable resource use as Vietnam’s economic growth and development highly rely on its natural resource endowment and the agricultural productivity.

Rationale
In the discussions about economic transition and natural resource management schemes, local livelihood systems of the northern mountain area of Vietnam have often been neglected. However, these local systems are increasingly confronted with growing interests from outside their decision-making sphere. Due to a lack of access to information and communication as well as general misconceptions local needs are often not fully taken into account and tend to be overlooked repeatedly. There is a deficit in considering and acknowledging local livelihood strategies and endogenous development potentials in economic growth plans and natural resource management concepts.
The research project departs from this issue and attempts to highlight institutional aspects of the highly complex social and ecological settings of local livelihood systems in the mountain provinces of northern Vietnam. The research is conducted in Dong Phuc and Cao Thuong, two communes of Ba Be district in Bac Kan province, which lie in the buffer zone area of Ba Be National Park, established in 1992 and nowadays under the direct mandate of the central government. The research project focuses on the social dimension of the ongoing processes of change due to the establishment of the National Park as well as the economic integration. The particular local development context creates undoubtedly conflicts amongst different interest groups and puts restriction on the actual resource utilisation of local inhabitants. The research investigates this situation on the village level in order to acknowledge local needs and responds to change.

Objectives
The research aims at contributing to a better and advanced understanding of local institutional patterns of natural resource management and decision-making in times of ongoing change. It endeavours to elaborate a study on the local institutional arrangements which mediate the interaction between people and the natural environment. They are seen to be crucial in mitigating adverse effects of change and in enhancing local people’s participation in the decision-making process. It sets the local actors at the centre of stage in order to understand the endogenous development potential and the capacities for self-determined development. Advanced insights into local livelihood systems are important in order to strengthen the local capabilities to respond to growing competition and conflicts about natural resources in the area as well as the macro-level induced changes of the economic transition process. The findings of the study will be disseminated to higher decision-making bodies and project implementing agencies and promote an enhanced acknowledgement of local needs and socio-economic complexity.

Methodology
The research adopts the analytical concept of political ecology which works with a multi-level analysis and a multi-agent modelling approach. It uses the conception of a ‘politicised environment’. The study applies the framework of environmental entitlements in order to investigate the endowment of individual households, their access to and control over agroforestry resources and the socio-economic pattern of selected villages. The following methods are used: qualitative interviews, endowment and entitlements ranking, actor-network analysis, biographies of local institutions and organisations, social mapping, household survey, land use mapping, environmental histories, village and site histories, systems analysis and discourse analysis.

Project period: October 1999 to September 2002.

Institutional links and collaboration
The PhD project is elaborated in the School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Great Britain. The research in Vietnam is affiliated with Helvetas Vietnam and integrated in the Mountain Agrarian System Regional Project (SAM-Project) of the Vietnamese Agricultural Science Institute (VASI) linked with the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).